Humor In Tooltips

[x4000]

Haha, nice.  You know, I never did really play them at all.  My wife played the first two or three, I think.  I saw her playing them some, but it just wasn't my thing.

[Captain Jack]

Haha, nice.  You know, I never did really play them at all.  My wife played the first two or three, I think.  I saw her playing them some, but it just wasn't my thing.

They were neat. Most people probably didn't realize they were playing a visual novel until someone else told them. I'll admit that Etrian Odyssey wound up being my favorite DS game series; something about cartography alongside a RPG just works. Come to think of it, there were a lot of neat RPGs by Atlus that I really liked.

You?

[x4000]

Huh!  I never thought of them as a VN before.  That's funny.

My taste in RPGs is pretty limited, so you'd probably have better luck with Keith on that.  When it comes to JPRGs, I'm mostly into classic Squaresoft stuff.

[Captain Jack]

Huh!  I never thought of them as a VN before.  That's funny.

See?

Classic Square huh. Funny how things turned out there. Did you prefer the action-y side or turnbased?

[x4000]

Classic Square huh. Funny how things turned out there. Did you prefer the action-y side or turnbased?

Yeah, funny how it turned out.

I preferred "most anything before FF7" by them.  And then I liked FFT and FFTA, too.  Secret of Mana has mechanics that are more fun, but FF6 and Chrono Trigger are my favorite games of all time (tied).  FF1 has a special place in my heart since it was my first JRPG and I spent so many hours of my youth playing it.  FF2 and FF3 were kind of meh, same with FF5 actually, and FF4 was quite good.  I also enjoyed Secret of Evermore and Earthbound, not that the latter was Square.  Final Fantasy Adventure was... okay.

I also played all the later games, MMOs aside, some to completion and most not.  FFX was really fun mechanically and the story was good in parts.  FFXII was pretty fun mechanically, mostly, and the atmosphere was pretty all right.  And... yeah.

[Captain Jack]

Classic Square huh. Funny how things turned out there. Did you prefer the action-y side or turnbased?

Yeah, funny how it turned out.

I preferred "most anything before FF7" by them.  And then I liked FFT and FFTA, too.  Secret of Mana has mechanics that are more fun, but FF6 and Chrono Trigger are my favorite games of all time (tied).  FF1 has a special place in my heart since it was my first JRPG and I spent so many hours of my youth playing it.  FF2 and FF3 were kind of meh, same with FF5 actually, and FF4 was quite good.  I also enjoyed Secret of Evermore and Earthbound, not that the latter was Square.  Final Fantasy Adventure was... okay.

I also played all the later games, MMOs aside, some to completion and most not.  FFX was really fun mechanically and the story was good in parts.  FFXII was pretty fun mechanically, mostly, and the atmosphere was pretty all right.  And... yeah.

My condolences for your loss. 

Dragon Warrior was my first non-Pokemon JRPG. Ironically, I'm pretty sure I finished Final Fantasy 1's GBA port and still haven't finished DW1.

Chrono Trigger... man, Square and Enix did good work together. And then Squaresoft ran with Cross and the director retroactively rewrote the ending of Trigger to be the way he wanted it to be (and was overruled on). At least the team is in a better place now, they left after Xenogears and the company they started is owned by Nintendo.

Somewhat amusingly, FFXII had a nightmarish dev cycle. The FFT guy was in control, then he was part of a committee working on it, then the game went over budget and off schedule, then he left the company... it's why the game gets really political and dark in places and then is, well,  not in most of it. (Small confession, I like Tactics Ogre (PSP) better than I like any incarnation of FFT. Put way too many hours into FFTA though.)

You mentioned you followed the romhacking scene ages ago. You ever play the fan translation of Seiken Dentetsu 3?

[x4000]

Ah, yeah, I liked Dragon Warrior as well.  DW4 I played a fair bit of.

How did they rewrite the ending of CT in CC?  I played CC, most of it, once and a long time ago.  I was not really a fan.  It seemed to me to be just entirely separate from CT in any important ways.

That's nuts on FFXII, that sounds like quite the challenge to put it mildly.  That would explain the wild fluctuations in tone, though.  I didn't really mind those changes, because they felt natural enough in the context of a long epic story, but still.

I did play Seiken Dentetsu 3!  I failed to ever really love it as much as SoM/2, but I could definitely see where it was a technical improvement in particular.  The story just didn't grab me as well, I guess.

[Captain Jack]

DW 4 was neat. I think I roadblocked in front of the final boss for one reason or another. Have a save file sitting somewhere, should really just sit down and finish the game.

From what I understand, the director of CC wanted to emphasize how changing history for any reason could blow up in your face, and have the ending hit the main cast hard. The rest of the project leads, and CT had its cheerfully melancholic ending. Come CC... well, while they're never really upfront about it...

Spoiler for Hiden:

Chrono, Marle and Lucca die five years after CT after their kingdom is overthrown by an empire that didn't exist in the original timeline. Who knew that teaching a neighboring mayor kindness via time travel would have the side effect of turning his quiet little country into a conquering empire.  Oh, and then Robo dies during the storyline. "Now deleting Prometheus".

There's more to it than that, but it involves a bit-part villain (Dalton from Zeal) inspiring said village to conquer Guardia, and that was only proven in the DS remake of CT after being suspected for years, so... yeah. Kind of a wallbanger.

CC had bigger problems though. It wanted to be bigger that CT in every way, so it had 40+ playable characters, of which maybe 8 were in any way memorable, useful or unique past what stupid accent and verbal tic they were assigned. It wanted to have a bigger scope, so it dealt with big themes and theoretical concepts... poorly. That could just be the translation, but Japanese is a language designed to be open-ended and contextual. GREAT music though.

XII was kind of a waste, really. Yasumi Matsuno's major artistic inspiration is the ethnic cleansing in 1990s Yugoslav Wars. So all his stuff is really political and shows the effects of armed conflict on people who are near it, whether or not they're directly involved. There are supernatural entities benefiting from the conflict, but the implication is that the only ones who COULD benefit from wanton slaughter and misery for its own sake would have to be demonic in nature. His Ogre Battle series ran with it, and Tactics Ogre impressed Square so much that they hired him away from Quest, and later bought the company outright. He made Vagrant Story and FFT, both of which are highly acclaimed but didn't set the charts on fire, and then FFXII happened, which had problems.

I think it's telling that he's working on a smartphone game with an American company now.

[Traveller]

After many years I've settled on FF4 as being my favorite of the FF games.  Pretty solid story, and after all the games that came after it, _not_ being able to customize and cheese out my party is pretty cool.  Also, swapping lots of characters in and out of the party for story reasons and having the party actually feel different means that story and gameplay are joined for once.  Five character party--yes please.

Chrono Cross I wanted to like, its story did feel pretty compelling, but I hated the combat system badly.  Felt boring and time consuming, and the early game was so bad at it that I couldn't get anyone else to get to the later parts.  It's also the game that made me hate thief classes: stealable items were so valuable and so omnipresent that it felt mandatory to have one of the like...two? thieves in your party for every boss. 

Secret of Mana...I agree seems like the strongest, and even though I liked SD3 it somehow didn't keep the epic feel.  I couldn't really identify with the characters, balance was waaaay off (looking at you, Kevin), and the leveling system was a distraction.  Evermore gets more hate than it deserves, the writing was for younger audiences but it was still solid.

Star Ocean 1 was really, really good, and was also entirely inaccessible to western audiences until pretty darn recently.  I'm sad that I can't play it on real hardware; it's one of a tiny number of games that my SNES flash cart can't handle.

Need to force myself to play FFT one of these days. The early game difficulty was a big turnoff, I liked FFTA though.  Similarly I need to force myself to actually finish Ogre Battle, every time I try I wind up halfway through with a party that just doesn't feel like it can go the distance.

Could someone recommend a good DW game after 4?

[x4000]

Very interesting read!  And wow, I had no idea there were that many playable characters in CC, that's nuts.  That's also quite crazy for the ending that was changed.  Then again, it doesn't really bother me because I don't see it as having one timeline and one ending anyway.  There were 13 to begin with, if I recall.  Not all serious, but still.  I'd also like to add that I really liked Dalton as a bit part villain.  He's no Ultros, but I thought he was pretty nifty.

Star Ocean 1 is one that I've meant to play, too.

[Captain Jack]

Dragon Quest V DS. Best game in the franchise, probably the most influential JRPG ever. IX is also good, but is a game for the fans, works best when you recognize the references.

VII is a personal favorite, as is III. Wait for the 3DS port of the former if it ever leaves Japan, the official English translation is not pretty on PS1. GBC III is fine.